


Memories, Tightly Woven

by Phantom



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:07:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantom/pseuds/Phantom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was always Ellimere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories, Tightly Woven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_antichris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_antichris/gifts).



> Thank you for the chance to revisit one of my favorite books, and to delve a little deeper into this beautiful world. Happy Yuletide!

There was always Ellimere, woven tightly into the fabric of Sabriel’s life.

Her memory was a strange place, made stranger yet by the passage of time. 

Her earliest memories were imprecise, of course, faded and half formed. Some things, once tasted, lingered. She recalled the sharp tang of Free Magic long after she crossed the Wall at her father’s knee. Her earliest days in Waverly must have made far less of an impression upon young Sabriel, however, because she could say only that the days were pleasantly indistinguishable from one another. There was a routine that they had lived, day by quiet day, for years. 

Where had she met these girls, and where had they come from? Why, she had always known them, and they had always been there. She could not remember a time before Ellimere, a time before that fussy and self-assured girl; or Sulyn, bolder and less refined. But the memories bled one into the other sometimes, and she could not recall exactly what they had done, or when. 

Her clearest recollection of the three of them together was when they were thirteen years old, Ellimere closer to fourteen and Sabriel just a week past her birthday. They’d slipped out of their dormitory to steal scones and tea from the kitchens, and had themselves a nighttime picnic in a dusty, little-used corner of the library. Such rule-breaking was unlike them, but Sulyn’s eldest sister, Ellawyn, was a prefect and _she_ could make herself tea at midnight and wander the corridors if she so chose. And what was the difference, really, between almost-fourteen and sixteen, Sulyn wanted to know? As if it was some magical age.

They were children, Sabriel knew now. Children who wished to be grown.

There had been a map affixed to the wall behind them. Or, no, perhaps Ellimere had spied an atlas on one of the shelves and paged through it. Sabriel wasn’t sure anymore, but that wasn’t important.

“The Old Kingdom,” Ellimere mused, nibbling daintily at a scone. “What’s it like there?” 

“Yes,” Sulyn said. “Tell us, Sabriel.”

“I, um...” She looked from one to the other and back again, their eyes bright with curiosity in the candlelight. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything!” said Ellimere.

“Do they have scones in the Old Kingdom, do you think?” Sulyn asked.

Sabriel could have lied and said, yes, of course, or no, the Old Kingdom is filled with delights more exciting than ordinary pastries. She could have invented some fanciful tale of the cuisine of a homeland she no longer remembered. But it wasn’t in her nature to do so, so Sabriel considered the question as she swallowed the last of her own scone, and then she lifted a shoulder in an unladylike shrug. 

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ve never been there. Not since I was a child.”

“Well, why not?”

“It’s dangerous, ninny,” Ellimere said, raising her chin haughtily. “You can’t just go there.”

“How do you know?” Sulyn challenged. “You’ve never been there, either. And I’ve never seen the Dead. How do you know they’re not stories made up to frighten children?”

“Oh,” Sabriel said, alarmed. “No, those stories are true. That much, I know.”

“Still,” Sulyn said. “I should like to go there someday. It sounds terribly exciting. Could you take me there?”

“I’ve never been,” Sabriel reminded her.

“But you’ll have to someday, won’t you?”

She supposed so.

“And I’ll go with you,” Sulyn said. “Ellimere, too, if she’s not too frightened.”

“I’m not frightened,” Ellimere said. “I’m sensible.”

She paused then, and looked towards the window, dark though it was, her gaze almost wistful. “But,” she added quietly. “It is awfully beautiful, isn’t it, when it’s nighttime here and you can see the sun rising across the Wall. Or when you look up in the middle of summer and see snow falling—when that happens, I swear I even feel a little cooler than before.”

“You’ll take us with you, won’t you, Sabriel?” Sulyn added. “Just for a visit?”

“Er—It’s really very complicated to—" Part of her reasoned that there would be no harm in making such a promise, because the chances were that she would never be called upon to honor it, and it would please her friends greatly if she did so. But the better, smarter part of her knew that she should not make such a dangerous promise. Looking back, she knew that she made much harder choices in the years that followed this silly little escapade in the library, but it seemed a great thing at the time. 

“It’s safer here in Ancelstierre,” she said at last, and her voice was firm. “My father sent me here for a reason, and the Wall was built for a reason.”

And that was that. Sulyn, though disappointed, reached and took another scone and Ellimere followed suit. Sabriel sipped from her drink and when they were done they snuck quietly back into their dormitory.

Sometimes, when she walked along the parapets and looked out across Belisaere, Sabriel remembered her two friends who had looked to the north with such bright and curious eyes. For Ellimere, it had not been safer in Ancelstierre, and that had been another difficult lesson to learn. True safe places were few and far between. 

She wished that she could have brought them to this place after all.

Memory was a funny thing. She had seen them, spoken to them every day of her life for nearly thirteen years, and yet, when pressed, she could not recall specific memories without great effort. It was as if all of their conversations and all the times that they had spent together had knit themselves into one single thing, one undistinguishable mass of memory that wrapped itself around Sabriel like a blanket, warm and comforting and always, always there. 

Some days, she picked them apart, teased out the individual strands, and then she would laugh to recall their arguments and how many hours they had spent drilling her in arithmetic (she owed her third place finish in Mathematics to them), and how they would, in the hours of the night, lower their voices and whisper, giggling, about the young men they would meet at University.

She carried them with her, wherever she went in Life, and she did not search in Death. Ellimere, for all her fuss, was brave, and when called to it, she did what needed to be done. She would have floated down the river and risen up to answer the call of the stars. 

There was always Ellimere, until there wasn’t.

And then there she was again, for when Sabriel gave birth it was to a healthy girl with a loud cry, there was a similar look about them, though her daughter’s eyes were the unfocused blue of a newborn babe and not the dark brown she had known so well. It was a trick of her imagination, or perhaps it was the shape of those eyes, the way the child stared knowingly out into the world even from birth.

Those were traits she should like her daughter to have, so Sabriel turned to her husband and said, “Her name is Ellimere.”

He must’ve thought that strange, but Touchstone said only, “As you wish, my love,” and kissed her temple. 

And so the child was named, another life was intricately entwined with hers.


End file.
